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Lithuania: emergency care, hospitals and waiting rules
Compulsory health insurance that has to be kept current, a family doctor who holds the referral pad, and emergency care that is given whether or not any of that is in order.
Emergency: 112
This page explains how the system works. It is not a diagnosis, it cannot tell you how urgent your own situation is, and it is not a directory: it carries no clinic addresses, opening hours or visiting times, because those change and a wrong one sends you to a closed door. If someone may be seriously ill or injured, call the emergency number — 112 across the region, 113 for medical emergencies in Norway — and if you are unsure, call your country’s advice line rather than deciding from a web page.
The numbers
| What it is | Number | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency | 112 | Ambulance, fire and police |
One number, and one thing to check about yourself
112 covers everything. The Lithuanian particularity is not the number but the insurance: state-paid care depends on being covered by compulsory health insurance, which is paid by an employer, by the state for defined groups, or by the individual. Cover lapses quietly, and the National Health Insurance Fund’s standing advice is to check your own status rather than discover it at a hospital reception, because an uninsured person is billed for planned treatment at the full rate.
Emergency care does not check the card
Whatever the insurance position, emergency medical care is provided free of charge when life is in danger or when delay would cause serious harm. That is the line that matters for anyone travelling, working temporarily or between jobs: the emergency department treats first. Everything beyond that boundary — the planned operation, the outpatient follow-up, the reimbursed medicine — depends on cover, and this is why the status check is worth doing before you need it.
The family doctor holds the referral
Planned specialist care runs through a family doctor’s referral, and the referral is one of the conditions for the treatment being state-paid rather than billed. In hospital terms the front door of an acute hospital is the reception and emergency department — the priėmimo-skubiosios pagalbos skyrius — and the same triage logic applies there as everywhere else in the region: order of clinical severity, not order of arrival. The triage page explains the ladder.
Your record is national and electronic
Lithuania runs a national e-health system that holds electronic prescriptions, referrals, discharge summaries and vaccination records, and it is the practical place to confirm what a doctor has actually written. Cross-border, Lithuania is inside the same EU framework as its neighbours, so a European Health Insurance Card covers medically necessary care during a temporary stay and the routes for planned treatment abroad are the ones set out on the cross-border page.
What this page does not claim
Lithuania publishes less patient-facing detail in English than its northern neighbours, and the honest position is that the current co-payment rules, the reimbursed-medicine lists and the waiting-time figures belong to the National Health Insurance Fund and to the territorial funds rather than to a reference page. Where the other country pages here carry a table of figures, this one carries a pointer, on the principle that a stale number is worse than no number.
Sources: E-health services and health portal (esveikata.lt) · National Health Insurance Fund (Valstybinė ligonių kasa) · checked 2026-09-08
Frequently asked questions
Is emergency care free in Lithuania if I am not insured?
Emergency medical care is provided free of charge when life is in danger or when delay would cause serious harm, regardless of insurance status. Planned treatment is not: without compulsory health insurance you are billed for it, which is why the fund advises checking your own cover.
Do I need a referral to see a specialist in Lithuania?
For state-paid specialist care, yes — a referral from a family doctor is one of the conditions for the visit being covered rather than billed. Emergency care needs no referral.
Where is my medical record?
In the national e-health system, which holds electronic prescriptions, referrals, discharge summaries and vaccination records and is accessible to you as the patient.
What number do I call?
112, for ambulance, fire and police alike.
The other countries
Estonia
One emergency number, a 24-hour family-doctor line, a hospital network fixed by regulation, and waiting-list maximums that are set in a published decision rather than left to the hospital.
Finland
A national medical helpline you are expected to call before turning up, twenty-two organisers instead of three hundred municipalities, and access limits written into statute with a number for every step.
Sweden
One advice number that doubles as the country’s health website, twenty-one regions running their own care, and a guarantee everyone quotes as four numbers: 0, 3, 90, 90.
Norway
The one country in the region where the ambulance is not 112, a regular GP assigned to every resident, and a right to treatment expressed as an individual deadline rather than a national number.
Denmark
The country that made phoning ahead compulsory: five regions, five acute numbers, and an emergency department you are expected to be sent to rather than to find.
Latvia
An ambulance service with its own number, a family-doctor line that takes over when the surgeries close, and co-payments that are capped three ways — per hospitalisation, per operation and per year.
All the emergency numbers in one table · Which door to use · Falling ill in another country
Have the answers before the questions
Age, weight, medicines and when it started are the first four things anyone asks. TempoLife keeps them in one place, on the phone that is already in your pocket.